


To The Moon And Back

by Nununununu



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Domestic, Don't copy to another site, Family, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Holding Hands, Husbands, Kid Fic, M/M, Magic, Parenthood, Post-Canon, Protectiveness, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:07:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25540297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/pseuds/Nununununu
Summary: In a universe where a grown up Dudley has a husband and a baby daughter, a revelation occurs.
Relationships: Dudley Dursley/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 71
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	To The Moon And Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whalebone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whalebone/gifts).



> For the lovely Whalebone, whose prompts were just so good <3 I loved the idea of an adult Dudley who has grown able to see beyond his parents' opinions and to question their attitudes, while forming a life for himself they wouldn't have expected for him.
> 
> (Originally posted 01/08; updated for author reveals)

“Dudley?” Richard’s voice is careful as he calls down the stairs, in that way he gets when something’s wrong but he doesn’t want to make a fuss about it, “Can you come here please, love?”

Even as he fishes down the side of the sofa for the remote and thumbs the TV off, Dudley can’t help but hear an echo of his father’s affront had his mother dared interrupt Vernon’s program.

“Just get up and help her for once, why don’t you,” Dudley finds himself muttering, as if his dad could somehow hear, and quickly sticks his feet in his slippers – it’s a damned cold winter evening and the hallway’s got a wooden floor – navigating his way up the stairs in what light comes out of the lounge, rather than turning the one overhead in the hallway on.

“Everything okay?” He heads for Gemma’s room, because Richard had gone up there fifteen minutes ago when she woke up for her milk, “Gem done another _world’s most horrifying_ nappy?”

For all he’d found himself surprisingly delighted to be a father, Dudley would freely admit he hadn’t been prepared for the reality of changing time. He can deal with it – he _does_ deal with it, when it’s his turn – but it doesn’t mean he’s got to like it, even so.

He loves everything else about his daughter, every tiny little bit – to the moon and back.

“No, it’s, ah,” His husband’s voice gets even more careful, if anything, “Dudley, it’s not that.”

“She puked on you?” Pushing Gemma’s door open with a smile for the brown hares painted onto the wooden name plate it displays, Dudley heads in fully expecting to find Richard covered in regurgitated milk.

The room’s full of dancing golden sparkles, like a hundred fireflies have flown in through the closed window. His heart nearly stops.

“Love?” Richard’s on his knees next to the changing mat on the carpet, glasses near slipping off his nose, a soft cloth thrown over his shoulder and Gemma cradled carefully there, his hand cupping her tiny head.

Her little dark eyes are fixed on the spiralling sparkles, her gaze aglow, and Dudley knows, he _knows_.

“Oh Richard,” He finds his legs give out under him and he sinks down, careful not to make a loud noise and startle their daughter. One of his hands goes out towards his husband, while the other strokes Gemma’s velvet soft little brow, “Oh _Gem_.”

\---

“Magic?” Richard’s voice is calm, unemotional; the tone he adopts when he’s beyond not wanting to make a fuss and just in full on stiff-upper-lip mode.

“Magic,” Dudley pours his husband another cup of tea, glances at the screen on the monitor to check Gemma’s still safely asleep in her crib, her little arms outstretched either side of her head, and pushes the plate of biscuits across the table Richard’s way.

They’d met at one of Dudley’s boxing matches – Dudley had noticed Richard amongst the audience with his mother, sitting not far away from Piers, the unfamiliar young man sticking out like a sore thumb given his nose had been stuck in a book.

His mother had been busy elbowing him, trying to draw his attention to Dudley’s opponent – Richard’s cousin, as it turned out.

Dudley’s dad had been bellowing encouragement – and some ribald comments about said cousin Dudley found he actually felt a little embarrassed about – while his mother sat very stiffly as if not wanting to make contact with the seat and jumped with each punch, although she clapped more than anyone when he won.

Richard had turned up at the next match too, and the next, and Dudley’s dad had said something offensive, and Dudley had had words with him. His dad, not Richard. Vernon had used to get all red-faced and wheedling if Dudley tried that as a child, and then red-faced and more belligerent as Dudley grew into an adult, and it had taken Dudley really quite a while to work out that it didn’t really help to be belligerent back.

His mum had definitely been pleased when he refused to get in a shouting match with his dad and Piers had patted Dudley on the back when he’d told him, and Dudley had been left feeling unexpectedly pleased about it. Kind of – like he’d succeeded at something without really knowing what.

He made a point of speaking to Richard after the next match.

“Magic doesn’t exist,” Richard – not Rich, not Richie and certainly not Rick, as he’d been sure to inform Dudley back when they first chatted and Dudley now passed on to anyone they met – wrapped his hands around his teacup, ate another biscuit and leaned back into Dudley’s touch when Dudley pushed himself up from his chair to cross around behind his husband and rub the tension from his shoulders.

“It does, love,” It sometimes still took him aback, even after going on three years and adopting their daughter, the fact he and Richard managed to get on together so well, with a few niggles at first to be fair, but without – so far, at least – any of the prolonged frosty silences or screaming fits his parents used to have. Still have, probably. No skeletons in _their_ cupboards, or at least not as far as Dudley knows – and he trusts his husband, just as Richard does him.

And thinking of cupboards –

Now he has a baby of his own, Dudley can’t even begin to conceive how his mum and dad could have shoved Harry’s cot in that cupboard under the stairs and shut him in there alone. How they could have treated Harry like that, growing up. How they could have treated Dudley so differently, just because he was their own son – Gemma’s not Dudley’s flesh and blood, but he’d give her the world if he could.

But his mum and dad made Dudley feel the way they treated Harry was so normal it took him _years_ to realise it really wasn’t.

Nor was the way they treated him.

Dudley’s still mad at them now, although he’s trying not to be, and he’s had a good few talks about it with Richard and the therapist his husband nudged him into seeing, which has helped. Richard goes to a different therapist himself, has done for ages, which helped with Dudley’s initial scepticism, and when Dudley told Piers he didn’t laugh about it, which had also gone some way into convincing him into giving it a try.

Anyway, while Dudley’s apologised to Harry, which was awkward, he hasn’t yet introduced him to Gemma, given Harry’s been off doing some wizarding secret police thing for months. Got back recently, though, which feels sort of like fate; Dudley’s been trying to come up with a good way of raising the topic – _by the way, magic exists and my cousin’s a wizard_ – with Richard for ages, his husband always so straightforward and serious.

Never thought Richard would get an introduction to it like this, though. On the monitor screen, Gemma is still sleeping peacefully, while tiny glowing birds fly above her crib.

“Magic,” Richard repeats, still a little stunned, and brings a hand up to clutch at Dudley’s.

“Not a bad thing,” Dudley finds that he both smiles and huffs – who, in the past, could have imagined him saying that?

But it’s true.

“Hm,” Richard’s voice implies he’s still shaken, but also intrigued. Dudley sits down next to him again without letting go of his hand, watching his husband watch their daughter on the screen.

The tiny birds swirl and flit.

“Not a bad thing,” The gravity of his expression cracking into one of his rare, dazzling smiles, Richard agrees, “They’re beautiful, aren’t they. What Gem’s making; her – her magic. It’s _beautiful_.”

“Yeah,” Something hurts a little in Dudley’s chest for the fact no one in his family had ever said this about his cousin’s magic when Harry was a kid, “It is.”

They sit there for a moment longer just watching their sleeping daughter on the screen.

“Right, let me send a quick text,” Dudley gives his husband’s hand a squeeze, which Richard returns, “Then let’s go upstairs and peek in at Gem’s little birds.”

“All right,” Richard raises an eyebrow at him in question and Dudley grins.

“There’s someone I’d like you and Gem to meet.”


End file.
